Reluctant Pentagon steps up police role / U.S. sending in more peacekeeping forces

Esther Schrader, Los Angeles Times

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, April 16, 2003

2003-04-16 04:00:00 PDT Washington -- Even as it insists that its soldiers aren't cut out for police work, the Pentagon is increasing its peacekeeping role in Iraq and bringing more military police and civil affairs units into the country.

It is a role the U.S. military takes on reluctantly, and one it fears will last for months or years. The reluctance is driven by the military's belief that soldiers trained to kill are not well suited to keep the peace.

"You can control a city of 5 million people, but you can't police it," said a senior defense official of the challenges facing U.S. troops in Baghdad. "We gave a lot of medals in the last three weeks to guys who know how to pull a trigger and hit something. It's hard to turn around and tell those same guys not to pull the trigger but read them their rights instead."

But with the U.S. unwilling to cede power quickly in Iraq to regional authorities or the United Nations, as it did in Afghanistan, it appears for the time being that the military has no other choice.

The Pentagon, which has more than 2,000 civil affairs and military police specialists attached to forces in Iraq or standing by in Kuwait, is planning to deploy more.

Hundreds of soldiers trained as military police accompanying the 4th Infantry Division have crossed into Iraq from Kuwait since Monday. Other active duty and reserve units are awaiting deployment orders.

Civil affairs units, including doctors, engineers, lawyers, teachers and health care workers, are on standby to move into Iraq, military officials say.

The conventions of international law imply that the United States is responsible for maintaining order in Iraq if it is an occupying force.

The Hague Convention says an occupier "shall take all measures in his power to restore, and ensure, as far as possible, public order and safety."

The Geneva Convention of 1949 further spelled out the duties of an occupying army. "To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Army has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population," it says.

But the law does not say exactly when these duties are triggered.

"That's a factual determination," W. Hays Parks, a legal adviser for the Army, said last week. "Not until the fighting has concluded . . . do you reach the point where technically there might be a military occupation."

The heavy obligation that goes with occupation might encourage extra caution in proclaiming victory, said Michael J. Glennon, a law professor at Tufts University. Despite the rout of organized enemy forces, U.S. military officials still maintain that the war is not over.

"We may well be hesitant to declare victory for just this reason," Glennon said. "We might be reluctant to assume the full responsibility for the health, safety and welfare of the Iraqi people."

The military police units that advanced with U.S. combat forces in Iraq, scattered through Marine and Army units on the front lines, were deployed primarily to deal with what the Pentagon had expected to be tens of thousands of Iraqi deserters, most of whom did not materialize.

The State Department has pledged to organize a force of 1,200 civilian police and judicial officers from various countries to send to Iraq, and U.S. military officials and diplomats are in discussions with foreign governments about whether each could contribute to the force.

"In Iraq we are creating a vacuum of power, and we are not initially -- and may not be able to -- give the country right back to whoever the regional powers are because in many cases that causes more problems than it solves for us," said Owen Cote, associate director of the security studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "We have to be the authority, whether we like it or not."

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The Pentagon may be hoping to quell civil disorder through the sheer strength of the U.S. military presence in the country. There are about 120,000 U.S. troops in Iraq now, but they are broadly dispersed. When the 4th Infantry Division, the 3rd Armored Cavalry Division and other units deploy in Iraq, the number of U.S. troops in the country could increase by as much as 100,000.

"It looks like we're getting ready to have a much more ubiquitous presence on the ground," Cote said. "We're just going to smother problems."

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